Readings: 1 Kings 17:8-16, Luke 7:11-17
We pray: Loving God you have
declared that your kingdom is among us.
Open our eyes to see it, our ears to hear it, our hearts to hold it and
our hands to serve it. This we pray in
Jesus name. Amen.
I was having my usual Friday lunch with our daughter Jessie and we got
talking about hope – or rather hopelessness – and in particular we spoke about
two books, both what we call post-apocalyptic books – On the Beach by Neville
Shute which we had both read, and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” which Jessie had
just finished reading.
On the beach – a book of the gradual annihilation of the life of the
world by the inexorable southerly drift of the nuclear fallout from the
northern hemisphere WW III – where people knew that it was only a matter of
time.
Did you know that the title of the book was taken from TS Eliots poem
The Hollow Men – from where also comes the phrase “this is the way the world
ends, not with a bang but with a whimper”
The Road – written in 2006 – has a world completely burnt up by some
kind of catastrophe (one never finds out what exactly) – a father and his young
son follow a road – through ashen landscapes and survivors who have lost all
sense of humanity – aiming for the coast where their might or might not be some
hope. And there is not!
Now that I have totally depressed you let me assure you that both novels
hold out a glimpse of hope for humanity – in different ways for sure - and it’s
really hard to find – but it’s there.
And so too it must have been in the two stories we heard today – a woman
and child of Sidon starved to a point of accepting death as inevitable and a
widow burying not just her son but, with him, her ability to survive in a world
where she would receive nothing.
The gospel story is really rather cursory – only told in Luke and very
little detail around the people involved – no request for help, no words of
thanks or response from the mother or son – they play quite a passive
role. The response comes from the crowd
around – seeing in Jesus’ compassionate response to one who was on the extreme
end of vulnerability, hopelessness you might say, as a sign of the promised
coming of God to the people of God. This
was the one pledged in the ancient promises.
In the case of the widow and son whom Elijah met at Zarephath, there is
a little more in the story – for instance we know the woman was generous still
to the role of hospitality and welcome.
And yet it must have been a cruel taunt – share your last meal with me,
why don’t you? I can’t help the thought
that a writer today might well end the story differently – and the word
‘muggins’ might well feature – but in this biblical tale of God’s grace we find
a hope in the midst of nothing. An
impossibility in the face of inevitable human demise.
I do think we have to be careful here though – if we just see these two
stories as about human hopelessness and an interventionist God who brings
relief, then we are I believe missing what God is saying to us. If we see God only as a divine dabbler who
intervenes in our misery and makes it all ok then we are off track.
Because we don’t, for instance, see that there was anything done here
that would have made their future lives any easier – no mega lottery wins or
transportation to the ever green lands of plenty – life would continue to
happen, sometimes good, sometimes purely awful.
We also don’t have any sense of their needing to repay the gift of
healing – both the very private story of the widow and son in the Hebrew
Scriptures and the incredibly public healing of the widow’s son by Jesus offer
no hint of their signing up for membership in response or in gratitude.
In some ways the people involved in the stories were almost unimportant
– passive really – and the reason for this is, I think, to encourage us to
focus on the infinite compassion and love that pours out of Christ on seeing
the pain and sorrow of this woman. He
could not pass by such affliction –‘ he had compassion for her’ are the words
Luke uses.
I believe what Jesus was saying to us with this story is about the very
real need there is in the world for healing, that there are people who know no
hope, who are vulnerable ( I know I use that word a lot but there is a lot of
it around) and helpless/hopeless, that nothing less is asked of us than the
pouring out of our love and compassion, our tender hands and caring hearts –
and that we are to offer it freely, drawn by nothing but their state of need.
Remember, neither women had actually asked for help, the opposite in
fact, they were pretty much accepting of their fate, and neither had rolled out
their credentials for being saved, ‘pick me, pick me’. Rather God sought them both out in their need
and offered to take up the pain and the sorrow – no conditions attached – and
asks us to do the same.
Powerful powerful story of love isn’t it?
- Not easy to live though – for to truly help, when we pour out our
hearts we inevitably become involved and that can mean hurt and pain for us
too.
-There are few shortcuts to success – life rarely changes course and
complexities of relationship and human need make for rugged travelling at
times.
-When we give we need to also need to refill our well – find places of
healing and nurturing for ourselves that we might be generous gifters of
love. We remind ourselves today as we
gather around the table that do not ask us to go out unprepared or alone – you
are with us.
-Its not about fixing something and then leaving – it’s for the long
haul and we will change and grow and be challenged if we have compassion for, seek to wipe the
tears of others.
Jesus heart was moved in compassion – for the widow and for all humanity
– the cross stands to attest to that, does it not? The cross, in the midst of the complexities
and pain of human life, stands for hope and renewal for all people, but
especially those whose plight moves us to infinite compassion. The world needs that kind of good news and
our challenge is to become it and to help others become it.
Margaret Garland
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